A Millennial Among Angels and Elves

There's the full cover. Unfortunately the print still isn't how I want it on Wattpad. It's not crisp enough to see when it's too small. So I'll have to keep playing around with it. I'd also like to one day get original art for the cover, but we'll see about that.

So my current blurb is: John is simply an ordinary college student. He's intelligent, has a girlfriend and is set to double-major in both physics and chemistry. But otherwise completely normal. Yet when he wakes up seemingly in another world full of genetically modified humans, he sets out to reunite humanity in the distant future and bring back its former glory.

So here's my latest chapter, the fifth part:

He woke up for what he was sure was the third time since the incident. The first time he could barely remember, but he was fairly certain he had asked Seer if she was an Angel to which she had replied yes.

The second time he remembered much more, but was still confused. He had avoided asking why so far he had only seen people with wings, apparently they were Angels, but he had a feeling they weren't Angels from heaven. He was certain they'd know more if they were.

Plus why would he still be sick if they were Angels, wouldn't they just be able to heal him like Jesus was said to have? That mystery though, was only one of many. Apparently he spoke a different language from everyone else? Yet it really seemed more like a really thick accent than a completely separate language.

And the language he spoke was apparently spoken by Elves? And the language everyone else spoke was descended from his language, so in a way it's also an Elvish language. They also thought he was an Elf, which was silly unless since he had woken up he had become an Elf.

He tried moving his arm and this time slowly, but surely he was able to move his arm, it was crazy how weak he had become, and touched his ears. They were still round, and didn't feel pointy like he would have expected an Elf to have. He moved his arm back to his side before letting it go limp again.

It was dark at the moment and he didn't expect anything to happen for a while, but then he heard the door open and a figure was standing there, silhouetted by the light from the stars, of which he could see thousands, so many he almost forgot about the fact that there was a figure who seemed to be staring at him, and seemed to have the wings that looked more like a bat than the wings of a bird that he had seen on Seer and Paeta.

"You're awake," said a gruff voice that sounded like it belonged to an older man. Strangely he talked a lot closer to what was apparently the Elvish language, than to what Seer spoke. "Yes," he replied, a little less wary of the possibility that the man might be there to kill him. "Well this is exciting, I have so many questions for you," the man said. "I'm not sure I can answer them, what's your name?" John asked. "Oh, my apologies, my name is Tanner," the man reached out a hand to shake and John made an effort to meet his hand, which the man took graciously and shook vigorously. "My name is John," figuring he should probably introduce himself.

"Well, I'm glad to meet you," it was clear to hear that the man wasn't used to being polite to people and was having a hard time preventing his voice from sounding like he was annoyed with everyone, but he was trying. "So why do you speak Elvish when according to Seer everyone else speaks a separate but related language?" he decided to get in before Tanner started his barrage of questions.

"Well I'm the village historian and part of my responsibilities is to know about other cultures, both past and present. Included in that was learning how to speak Elvish." Ok so that didn't quite draw the information he sought. "So what language does everyone else speak?" he ventured, not certain of which mystery to solve first, but figuring this was good enough. "Why English of course," Tanner sounded surprised that he didn't know the answer to these questions already.

"It's clear that you're very out of it," Tanner started hesitantly, "but I was wondering if you could tell me about the Ancients, all I know are myths and legends hundreds of years old." The Ancients, yet another group to add to the mystery. "Maybe," he decided to go diplomatically on this, he might only be alive because of his perceived knowledge, "what do you want to know about them?" He had suddenly had an idea.

"Well, what were they like? What caused their downfall? Was it true that they went to the stars? And did they really accomplish feats that even the Elves can't today?" Well apparently the Ancients were really technologically advanced, including having at least some space travel abilities. Yet they apparently weren't advanced enough to stop whatever destroyed their civilization. So possibly somewhat close in technology to civilization back home.

"Let me ask you one more question first," he needed to get one more piece of information. "Sure," Tanner said, clearly eager to learn more about these Ancients. "What continent are we on?" if the answer was what he thought it was then he might have an idea of what's going on. "North America, Seer and Paeta couldn't have carried you over from another continent," apparently he had asked another supposedly silly question, but that confirmed what he feared.

He was somehow in the future, either of his world, or some parallel universe. He would have to get more information to find out which, but he was fairly certain he had stayed on the same planet. Somehow against all odds, despite all logic that said he should be dead, dead, dead, he had survived hundreds of years trapped under ice, which was really a feat when you consider Global Warming that could've eliminated all the ice where he was.

And unless he really was in a parallel universe, these were simply genetically modified humans, which meant he would have to be careful when hearing a new term to find out whether that meant what he thought it did, or something else. Furthermore, sometime after he was frozen, the world seemed to have gone into a dark age, everybody except for the Elves that is.

While he could't really see Tanner, he could feel that Tanner was expecting an answer. "Well I can't tell you everything, but the Ancients really did go to the stars. Perhaps when I'm better I can show you some of the basic concepts that allowed them to accomplish this feat," he would show him the math involved in interplanetary or interstellar travel. It wasn't like Tanner could build a rocket, so he'd probably be impressed all the same and maybe it would keep himself valuable. "And while the Elves haven't lost the knowledge needed to do the same things that the Ancients did, they simply don't have the manpower needed to do the same things we once could," he was hoping this man's lack of knowledge of the Elves extended far enough he could get away with these guesses.

So far Tanner seemed to be buying it, which was good. "Now for what they were like. They were very powerful and knowledgeable. They had instantaneous access to all the information in the world. No one starved," at this point he was hoping that the Ancients were similar to 21st century Americans. "I'm afraid that I'm still very sick and am fighting to stay awake. Do you mind if we continue this another time?" this was true, but he really was just afraid of tripping himself up.

"Sure," he wasn't sure, but he though Tanner was trying to smile, but it was still too dark to know for sure. "But before you go, why are you up so late?" he decided to risk indulging his need for information with what could hopefully be passed off as an ordinary question.

"I'm a vampire of course," Tanner fluttered his bat wings in response and John could feel the wind whip his face. "Oh, of course, silly me, should have known." With that Tanner left John wondering if vampires drank blood in this bizarre future, and whether or not they drank Elven blood.

So before I get to who I think my primary audience is (or at this point, like to be) I'll just say a bit about the short history of this. So about a year ago, I had this idea for a world and I wrote about 9-10 pages or so in a few days of all these different groups of genetically modified humans. I wrote about how they might behave in a post-apocalyptic world and over the next few months I ocassionally updated it with more of the background of the world. At that point I had a world almost 400 years in the future ready to be written into a book, but while I loved the world I couldn't quite figure out what anybody could do in this world that would be particularly interesting so I sat on it until I discovered Wattpad. At that point I decided to try and improve my writing by posting online and getting anonymous feedback. I had had an inspiration on what I could do to make the story better and set it farther in the future, then brought someone from today into it. So if anyone who sees this would like to read this and give feedback that would be great.

Now as I understand it, my primary audience would be the lovers of both fantasy and scifi or simply fantasy, and probably of late teenager age (17-19) maybe a bit older. I've read a lot of Young Adult fantasy books so that is the style I'm striving for, but with my main character as a college student, I'll definitely have to adapt it to that age group.

Though so far as I'm writing this, I have 16 reads that I can be certain aren't from me and so far only two of those reads are showing up in my demographics. And apparenly the person or people who have accounted for those two reads are over 45, probably because I originally set it in the general fiction genre. I've decided now to put it in the Fantasy genre since that is the style of book that I plan it on being even though there won't be any magic and everything weird that goes on I am explaining with theoretical science, which was why I had set it in the General Fiction as I wasn't certain which genre to put it in at first.